


Sound Of Tires, Sound Of God: So You've Found Yourself In The Sands

by Go0se



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: (incidentally 'Unconventional Format' is the name of my imaginary electronica band), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Unconventional Format, Zones Religion and Lore (Fabulous Killjoys), Zones Slang (Fabulous Killjoys)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-01-31 03:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21439840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: Authors: Et al.Publisher: Compilation courtesy of The Scribes; archivist Verve's spindly sunburned handsEdition: GoingonGenre/Form: Nonfic; Guide bookDoc Type: Inner-Internet resource (open code); Audio bookbyte; Paper book, re-recycled twine and hopeSummary: Static, fury, flora, fauna. An unfinished green's guide to the Zones.
Kudos: 6





	1. For-Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is less a fic and more of a, "What should Goose do with all her messy out of context worldbuilding notes she's found now that MCR is _apparently doing a return show and festival shows_ and she has once again fallen head-long into Danger Days? Post them. All at once." Masquerading as a guidebook.  
Title is from 'Electric Version' by The New Pornographers. Thank you for reading, from the bottom of my sparkling emo little heart to yours.

* * *

HIDE FIRST.

* * *

_Notes from the Scribes:_

_  
_

_ If you've got your own soul, this is for you. _

_We can't much say welcome. You're not safe out here and no one might like you. But we can say: you're freer than you were inside._  
_The Zones are big places, and there's bigger things at work than anyone can count, much less than a book or soundbyte can hold. This is only a dust shard in a sanddune. A starting point._  
It is still a start.   
_In the hopes that it'll help people survive, this guidebook's for life out here in the desert._

_Stay alive long enough to scoop all of this into your head: only settle when it's quiet and the horizons are clear, or you'll get got real fast. We're not kidding._

_Find a mask. Wear sunscreen. Run fast or hide well._

_Good luck._


	2. Glossary: American Slang

Languages shifts like sand in wind, but with common people everywhere talking at each other, some words get common enough meanings. Some don't. For lots of reasons this list isn't static, but for those of us curious with at least eight lives left, the more popularized understandings have been recorded here. Always listen first before you say anything out loud.  
Biases here are of the recorder, not the recordings.

_Item Note: Updated Oct. 3rd, 2021._

-_S. Verve.  
_

  * **Anaphylactic:** _Description: _An experience, not an illness. When something's so good it makes you stop breathing. _See:_ shiny, milkshake.  
  
  

  * **Battery: **_Thing_. Objects what are used to power blasters, radios, sunlight cars, others. See: _blasters._
    * Alternate: _Thing,_ Someone's junk. 'Lick my battery' means 'go fuck yourself', or, 'fuck me'. Make sure you're sure which one, and who's talking.
    * Alternate: Shorthand for Battery City.
  * **Blasters:** _Thing._ Guns. Take large batteries, usually from Vends out in the desert, and are frequently colour-coded by their carrier._ Synchronyms: _zappers, pistons, hand-hums (less frequently); in Bat City talk, firearms.
  * **Blasted: **_Description._ Either hurt with a blaster, or, very fucked up by drugs and drink. Used in about equal measure.
  * **Bug-Eyed: **_Description. _"Crazy-face", irrational, the state of someone acting high and dangerous. Can be due to lack of sleep or lack of meds or too much of a good thing. See _party favours_).
  * **Bell-headed: **_Description_. Hungover. Called because you’re likely hold onto both sides of your own head like it's a bell you're trying to stop from ringing whenever you move.
  * **Ben Afleck: **_Thing_. An illness, not a person. You keep doing stupid dangerous things with 100% feeling that it is hilarious and a good thing to do.  
  
  

  * **Cactus juice: **_Thing. _Moonshine made from the suggested tree. Often home-brewed by many a crew. Fucks you up but good.
  * **Colours:** _Thing. _Pigments of light. Can refer to clothing, finery, etc, especially jackets. Can also refer to bandanas and other such not-strictly-clothing items, and make up, and regular paint. See _feathers._
  * **Crash-queen:** _People._ Sex workers, all genders.
  * **C****rusty:** _Description. _What it sounds like. Dirty, crust-covered, the developing of a literal level of ‘crust’ on a person.  

    * Alternate: Someone who's that, and wears it as a badge of honour and time well spent out in the sands. Think, smart, full of know-how
  * **Crystal: **_Description. _As clear as something can be. Usually a metaphor.  
  
  

  * **Dead**: You know what dead is. Difference in the desert being, there's four kinds of dead.  

    * 1\. See _'Laid Out'_
    * 2\. See '_Dusted'_
    * 3\. See '_Ghosted_'
    * 4\. See _'Mummed'.  
  
_
  * **Dead-eye(s): **_People. _Good Citizens of the Better Battery City.
  * **Dust:**_Thing _and _Place. _Sand and the desert. The grey kind of dust that builds up inside too, but mostly sand. It gets everywhere.
  * **Dusted: **_Description_. The state of a person who is just _mostly dead. _Can theoretically be fought back from. You need a special kind of hardcore to accomplish that, though. _Synchronyms_: Dust in the wind, dusted out.
  * **Draculoids:**_ Thing._ Synchronyms: Dracs. See _nobodyfaces._  

    * **-ization:** _Action. _What happens when someone puts on the Dracula mask. There's no coming back from it. We're sorry.
  * **Droids: **_People. _Mechanical souls. Made by BLI for sex (see _Pornodroids_), or housekeeping, or record-writing, or factories; traded their lives to the desert as workers, or run into it as hideaways, or escaped.

  * **Exterminators: **_People. _Bad news. BLI soldiers who can think, and command. They organize the Extermination Sweeps that hit the fairs and Fuck-You Houses every so often in the Zones, with the purpose being to round up Runners and bring them back to the City, turn them into ghosts. Fast and hard to kill. Do not approach, unless you've got a deathwish. If you do, approach fast.  
  
  

  * **Feathers:**_Thing._ clothing, finery, etc. Can also be colours, but not the other way around.
  * **Flashbang:**_Thing. _Bombs, usually thrown.  

    * Alternate: a big fight.
  * **Flotsam:** _Thing. _Anything that washes up in the sands, doesn't matter from Before or from other Runners. See _junk._
  * **Fuck You house**_: Place _and _Protest. _Party houses, warehouses, or other buildings in the Zones that don't even try to hide. Loud and lit-up and often rancid with alc and parchment pills. A nexus for partiers, especially killjoys. _See: _shacks.  
_  
  
_
  * **Gear**: _Thing._ All and any of a Runner's things. Clothes, guns, belts, other assorted weapons, helmets, re-breathers, masks, headphones, gloves, etc.
  * **Ghosted:** _Description _and _Action._
    * 1) To be killed by a Drac blaster
    * 2) To be taken away by nobodyfaces in a white car after such a killing.
    * 3) The state of a person’s body having suffered 1 or 2. The third kind of dead.
  * **Ghost: **_Thing. _1\. A soul. Your ghost, their ghost, my ghost.  
2\. _Thing, _but dangerous. Runners _have _ghosts; but a Runner who _is _a ghost is one who's walked back from a ghosting, except with a white gun in their hand and all paint gone from their face and feathering. No soul left. Not actually your friend. Not a Runner at all anymore.  
  

  * **Glass (three miles of, broken): **_Place. _Sands, particularly the dunes in the northern part of Zone 1.
  * **Glitchy: **_Description. _Annoying, messed up behaviour, like a glitchy comp screen or transmission module. In extreme cases people are _glitches _by themselves.

  * **Junk: **_Thing._ Flotsam that's either or both grodier than regular stuff, and has a chance of being shiny if turned into something else._ Synchronyms_: scrap, pieces. _See:_ flotsam. _Hear_: "One 'joy's ____ is another 'joy's treasure." 
    * Alternate: _People._ Genitals.
  * **Junk-dealers: **_People. _Those who would steal all your shit while you were asleep after selling you a bunch of shit while you were awake**. **Thieves and peddlers. More so than the average Runner. Related to the first kinda junk, but not the second. See _spoiler.  
_
  * **Junk-punks: **_People. _Teenagers, all genders. Not related to either other junks. Called so because they think they’re hard as fuck and punky as hell, though to most seasoned Killjoys they haven’t really learned shit yet. They are, as a rule, even grimier and grosser-smelling (and depending on who you ask, worse dressing) than the average Runner.

  * **Killjoys: **_People._ The kind of Runner that are out to fuck up shit and ruin days, whether that's what they always planned on or what just happens every time they're around anything but cacti for square miles. Tend to keep the brightest colours, fight ugly, live loud, and run into danger.

  * **Laid out:** _Description. _When someone gets hurt or real sick and they start to sleep for too long, they're laid out. A lot of the time these Runners wake up, but sometimes they don't. The first kind of dead.
  * **Lazarus:** _Description _and _People. _Rare. Someone who got properly dusted (see _Dusted_), then sorted out their soul and got back up again.

  * **Migratory birds: **_People_. Those who are half into the Zones and half out. Usually still live in the City, but aren't dead-eyed anymore. One way or another people usually don't stay migratory for long.
  * **Migration: **_Action. _When the birds (above) make it out from the City; moving into the desert, meaning forever.
  * **Milkshake**: _Description. _An affirmative to a question, or an agreement; good, cool.
  * **Mummed:** _Thing. _Not your mother. Corpses that've stayed out in the sands for so long the skin is all dried out and shrink-wrapped, the bones are almost rock, and the hair's barely holding onto anything. The deadest kind of dead.  
  

  * **Medication****:**_ Thing. _Talk about with caution. Meds are one thing out of a lot that Runners get real twitchy about, but more important than most twitchy subjects because they're so mothetfucking omnipresent, until they aren't. 
    * Objectively: Pills, parchments, injectables, or potions that you don't take for fun, but do take for change.
    * By the compiler: The above, like a knife. A tool you can pick what you cut with. Some Runners need meds to survive, others never want to see one again. What all BLI feeds you in the City is what you gotta wean off in the desert, if you want to survive, but the problem's the dose and the totalitarianism. Not the pills alone.   
  
  

  * **Nobodyfaces: **_Things. _Catch-all for BLI soldiers. Called so because their faces aren’t human and the people who they are under their faces don’t matter anymore. _See:_ Draculoids, Draculoidization, dead, S/C/AR/E/C/R/O/W.
  * **Nobodybrains:** _People. _Higher-up BLI personell; the ones who boss the Dracs around. See _Exterminators._
  * **Newfoundland Screech: **_Thing. _A particular kind of alc, made of something called ‘sherry’ and something else called ‘Everclear’ that is basically lighter fluid.

  * **Paint-face: **_Thing. _Paste what you decorate your face with. Sometimes more of a berry-type mash, sometimes actual paint with a bunch of watery-stuff added to it to make it thinner and smoother. Sold at fairs or made on your own. Rare. You take what you find, generally, unless you were a A grade trader or pretty rich. _Synchronyms: _make-up, putting on your face.  
  

  * **Parchment pill: **_Thing. _Drugs that instead of ingesting or injecting into yourself, you just peel off the hand-out surface like a sticker and smooth it somewhere on your skin and you're higher than God. “Melts” off when worn out, like sugar dissolving. Can be purely wreckreational or used as antiseptic/painkiller medicine. Colour-coded.
  * **Party favours:** _Thing. _Wreckreational drugs of any kind. Come in many flavours, styles and sizes.  
  

  * **Phoenix Witch**: _Person, Belief._ The masked, bandaged head figure to one of the wider-spread Zone religions, which grew up post-Fires like so many desert roses. Runners who follow the Witch say that She meets you twice: at the first breath you take, and at the last. At the end, She takes your mortal soul and guides you out of the desert while your shadow stays back. Lazarus' (_see: _Lazarus) are said, by the same followers, to be pulled back into this world by Her grace. If the people who came back from being dusted believe that themselves, is another question.  
She is considered by her followers to be a deliverer of safe passage, keeper of hidden things; the patroness of the desert and all abandoned places. Shrines to the Phoenix Witch are built all over, but especially in the Middle- to Out-Zones, often by a Mailbox or another community hub.

  * **Runners: **_People. _A catch-all for everybody in the Zones who has a soul. The biggest bucket to pour us all into.

  * **S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W: **_People._ High-level BLI soldiers. Smarter and faster than Dracs, stupider than Exterminators. Bad news. Officially, "Squad for Collection And Recovery Excepting Cases Requiring Overt Weaponry”, because they “collect” and “recover” Runners except when they kill them._ Synchronyms: _Crows, Crow, blackbirds (not confused with 'migratory birds'-- _see: _migratory birds). _See: _Draculoids, nobodyfaces.  
  

  * **Shiny:** _Description. _When something really rocks your socks, but specifically when that something is a piece of tech, or a radio sound or song, or a raid plan; to be shiny, it should be intricate, with lots of moving parts.  

    * Alternative: A Zone-published porn magazine with mainly droid models. _See:_ Droids.
  * **Sightseeing: **_Action. _1., going out, cruising to hire crash-queens (one or many). _See: _crash-queens.  
2., Going Drac-hunting. Both terms used about the same. Ask the people in question which they mean or things might get sticky.  
  

  * **Skin-rippers: **_People. _Bad news to be run from, fast. Murderers and bloodsuckers that BLI rejected outright, or were smart enough to know that killing's easier outside the City boundaries.  

    * Many in the Zones try to avoid in-fighting except at the designated fighting pits, because violence takes resources that could be better spent surviving. Skinrippers relish in it.  
  

  * **Spoiler: **_People. _Thieves. Some days everyone out in the desert's a thief, but spoilers make it their job. Usually they're good at it, too.  
  

  * **Sugarspice:** _People. _Zone runners of the lady persuasion. 
    * **Sugarhead:** Little girls**, **or, less commonly, little ones in general of all genders. See _youngling._  

      * Alternate_: _an annoying condescending nickname for lady Runners.
  * **Sunshine:** _People._ Zone runners of the men persuasion.
  * **Starshine:** _People._ Zone runners who don't pick either of the above names for their own, or do but not all the time, or who like both. It's polite to ask, or assume this first until a 'joy says something otherwise. If you call someone wrong, you might get blasted, so take care.  
  

  * **Shacks:**_Places._ Post-Abandoned buildings peppered throuh the Zones that come alive on the inside. A bunch of different kinds. ; or a stash of first aid shit, respectively. 
    * **Techno shacks**: have tech supplies (which are pretty unanimously the DJs'). 
    * **Hidey-holes**: have strong enough walls/basements to bunk down in for the night. Courtesy is to leave when day breaks. _Synchronym: _bolt hole, hidey-shack.
    * **Safety shacks:** are hidey-holes that are permanently lived-in. Usually run by a crew, and usually neutral ground. Drinks and safety surveillance and a no-bullshit fights rule. These are usually bigger, and crossover with Fuck You Houses more than most.
    * **Sparkling shacks**: have access to clean—or rarely, coursing-- water. May or may not be glitterified.
    * **Med shacks:** are where Runners put communal first aid supplies. Take what you need, leave what you can. Usually monitored.  
  
  

  * **Top-heavy:** _Description: _When a Runner is pregnant. _Synchronyms:_ carrying, expecting, one in the pan, got a loading code.
  * **Transmissions:** _Action. _Any communication by someone that isn't done face to face. Radio airwaves, inner-internet (video or text) speech, old-fashioned snail mail, mouse code, tin cans and string, etc.  
  

  * **Wavehead:** _Person._ Sometimes you meet bad people in the Zones; sometimes you meet good people with bad habits. Waveheads are Runners who let the UV rays and radiation swells get so far into their brain that they get high off of it, so often that they usually die before long. A lot of people start waving as a last resort when they can't get wreckreational drugs in the amount or timescale they're looking for them. Deadlier than most other addictions.
  * **White Maria: **_Thing. _Bad news. A van driven by nobodyfaces when they're looking to round people up. Killjoys go in and if they're lucky, their crewmates help them out of it with a well-time rayblast. The not-lucky ones disappear.
  * **Witch's daughter:** _People. _A nickname to a religious belief. Like they think Lazarus' were pulled back on purpose, Runners who follow the Phoenix Witch (_see: _Lazarus, Phoenix Witch) think that certain people were touched by Her clawed bandaged hand at some time in their lives and are now blessed to do Her work, whether they'd gotten dusted before or not. These people are almost uniquely women. They're usually in the charity of medicine, transport, or sneaking people across the City border.

  * **Youngling: **_People. _Today's kids, all genders**. **S_ee: _sugarhead. _Synchronyms: _halfling, motorbaby, dust angel; roadgoblin, titchy one / titchies (condescending).

  * **Zones: **_Places._ May whatever god graced you help you now if you've gotten this far without knowing. Zones 1 through 6 outside Battery City's eco-dome; where we are all, and some of us are running to.

  
~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of these I just made the fuck up, but some are legit canonical! An extremely kind soul made a killjoy lexicon from the official Twitter accounts etc. from way back when, and I will link it here when I find it.


	3. A Note On Wildlife

_Item note: Found written slanted and covered in silt on a piece of cardboard in the Slides after a fair. Accurate based on crowdsourced reports; recopied and preserved here. Original hand unknown. -S. Verve  
_

Wolverines and deer and skunks and raccoons and possums and rabbits and bears and birds and snakes and lizards and coyotes and foxes and crocodiles and even mutated fish in some rivers. Hamsters gone feral through years of repopulating themselves without any human care. Hundreds, in some places. Guinea pigs the same way. Hawks and eagles picking them off dozens by dozens. Crows and rats and mice and spiders and cockroaches and flies. Caterpillars and adult caterpillars. Moths. Butterflies. Cats and dogs and the odd ferret: some taken care of by humans from Before, having ran with them; some coming to humans after, having an instinct for companionship and intelligence for food; [some feral and hissing at anything that came near, crowding small spaces in buildings or under rocks](https://youtu.be/05JCmuwiHGc?list=UUVpankR4HtoAVtYnFDUieYA&t=51). Chihauhas especially. Spitting, rad-sick, ray-mad, foaming mouths; healthy, growled warnings, blank eyes at night, babies clinging to fur or hanging in mouths. A company of people-kept parrots that had lived in what'd been Old Los Angeles before the people decided they were too much work and just let them go, ten or twenty or thirty birds; mythology spread from mouth to mouth will say that there used to be few hundred of them, the Fires and the War wiped most of them out. No one thought they’d make it, not really, not even Before, but parrots can live upwards of twenty years and they’re better survivors than people think. A copse of trees in the edge of Zone One holds them and some of their nests, and more branch out from there every radiated spring. The city sends Caretakers out to cull the mess and the colour and the noise of them but never manage to catch all of them at once. The parrots are the most obvious and extreme example of a desert truth, incongruous but real: life finds a way through the cracks in the plastic and the concrete. You can never stomp it all out. Desert grasses with small bright flowers grow just inside the City’s dome wall, and every night bot cleaners trundle around the perimeter spraying vinegary pesticide to wilt the leaves and roots, and every morning the grasses grow back.


	4. Tests 1 - What's Been Lost

_Item Note: Testimonial. Transcribed by S. Verve from taped interview of Susan Sunburst, old sugarpice Runner set up out by the food trucks in Zone Two, when (as described) Sunburst had set up by the bonfire during story hour. Second voice is the archiver asking; name unrecorded. Original dated M'Aider, May Day, 2o19. -S. Verve_ _  
_

The ocean. [Pauses] Before, my mother took us all up to the coast every springtime. A lot of people traveled like that back then. We saw whales and seagulls, all kinds of things. Mostly what you can't see anymore.

-_Seagulls still do pretty stable. _

[Wheezes] I guess they do.

_-Y'said Before. So what was it like After?_

[Pause. Sigh] A goddamned mess. I was still with my family when everything caught fire. As we saw it, everybody in the whole wide world who had their feet in the United States fled towards the oceans. There's one on the other side of the country-- there used to be-- it's farther, but some folks were too poor to make the run west, or couldn't get there quick enough so they hit a wall of heat. Here in Cali alone, hundreds of millions of people-- most 'f you can't even image. More than enough to cover all the roads like a wave.

-_This was before BLInd's takeover?_

Negative. During it. [Longer pause. Susan drinks something audibly.] Everyone shook out scared. Still can't say now if BLI planned the whole thing from front to back or not, either way, it helped 'em. Panicked people take answers easy, and they're less likely to organize. They'll walk into shelter when they find it, take supplies when offered, and barter their time in return. The Industry needed people. [Pauses]  
There'd already been martial law, by the oceans, even before the eyes went up everywhere. They set up barricades all over, and just like that the whole ocean was theirs to buy.

-_And your family?_

My mother, my sister, and brother. Lost all of 'em. First into the intake centres, then the Helium War. [Longer pause.] 'Course, these days, you probably think it's a pipe dream.

-_The wars?_

The ocean.

-_I don't._

[Snorts] Alright, maybe not _you. _But most folks past Two, the view for them doesn't even have it. I tried telling a sunshine selling sweet stuff about it once, he looked at me like I was talking backwards. Water comes in a bottle or burns from clouds and that's it, out there.

-_And here?_

... not the same thing here. [Pauses] You know, if you pay the right Ritalin Rats the right thing, they can lead you down into the tunnels-- not into Battery, through older ones. They used to take sewage or overflow from rainy seasons out away from the cities, and BLIND just let 'em dry out. Pop up fairs get set up inside them some nights. We do some pretty good business.

-_But those don't happen very often._

Negative. Nothing with a pattern. Usually it's just quiet-- old stone and water, right. The Rats get you out to the desal sculptures on the edge of Battery-- sucking in the ocean like a plug, and they're connected to the mattercycling plants by cords like tree trunks. It's hard to believe. Hardly looks anything like I knew it from shore. The whole damned place is regulated, crawling with nobodyfaces now. And they never break down. Or maybe the reconstruction bots have gotten quicker, I don't know. But if you're fast-- and if the Rats you're with can get you some bikes-- you can get down pretty far before you have to run.

-_I've heard you can climb the desalination tanks._

If you have a deathwish, sure. Sure is. A lot of 'joys get stuffed into temporary-body bags from up there, I'm telling you. The Rats only look after themselves and their own, so it isn't any skin off their tails if some runner loses their face. And there's still soot and ash from the Fires along the edge of the sand, too, if you look-- plus the watch boats that pass by. Can't get anywhere without seeing something, or being seen. Past always finds you.

[Longer pause] It's nice at the waterside, though. There's rigging on the desals for electrical, it's good enough for handholds; if you get to the top you can just look out at everything. ... I've only been once. All the sea and sand in front of you. You're up too high for the patrols to be in your eyeline, right, and the moon's always up where she rolls along, and it looks like there's just ocean out to the sky. You stand there looking at them long enough, you forget everything. It was like that when I was young too. Every spring, nights on end, watching the sunset. Beautiful as anything. Looks like hope.

A lot of us've lost seeing that now. Feeling that hope from the water. There's your answer.

  
-


	5. Persons Of Interest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for: body mods, which may lean towards body horror or mutilation for some, in the Rats' section. Specifically, purposefully cutting off parts of your own ears.

Like words, any notes on groups in the Zones is always gonna be incomplete. This one especially.  
  
Out in the desert, you'll need knowing who you're looking at, as well as where you can find them. Crews and allegiances change near as fast as words.   
Even the ones you think might not mean you, or anyone, harm, can fuck people up but good if they're on a bad trip or a particularly bad string of days. These are names to watch out for as much as they're names to recognize. Everything can change without warning, even if it's not wearing white. What's most important to remember is this: not all Runners are good.  
Watch out for yours and yourselves. Keep names in mind.

_Item Note: Last update February 13th, 2019. -S. Verve._

~

  * **Dumpster Possums  
**

_All you parasites, climb aboard!_  
_All you vagabonds, praise the lord!_

Clever and fast, short-tempered and virus-mouthed. Not quite skinrippers, but close enough to it to warrant that being said. 

Lots of Runners are messy; Possums are messy and _sharp._ Unsocial, they don't really talk to anybody, and they don't have to. The sprawling junk heap they made their home out of, way back when the fallout was still dropping nightly, is worth its weight in carbon. Full of stuff from whole cities Before that BLI confiscated and consigned. There's some beauty in it. Once you get a feel for the place it can even be kinda pleasant, really, except for the smell and the baking radiation oozing off into the air. The Possums themselves might've dissapeared themselves into the heaps of styrofoam shell-packages and SHINY magazine scrap mounds and never been seen again, except for the people who kept rolling up and trying to take from what they had. Everyone knows they dug up glass for traps in the 'walls' and the ground of the place, and shot trespassers on sight, but still, people of all stripes jusr kept coming.  
Possums stop short of _liking _constant murder. So, despite their short words and jagged-paint grins and violence, they mainly deal in trade._  
  
_**Members: **They rarely if ever show up all in one place at the same time, at least to outsider eyes. Sid Skid Mark is the most well known and, presumably, the leader. TempleT, and Charlotta Lime are some others. More lurk in the shadows and signal to each other. Always keep both eyes open.**  
Featherings: **Better than average considering all of the wealth they're sat on. Rebreathers, always and eternally. None of them have been seen without one.**  
Territory: **In and around the old dump in Four, officially titled “Section 23AF”, known by living people as 'The Stink Nest'. The Possums control the trash heaps with iron claws and souped-up rebreathers. Don't try to sneak in.

~  
  


  * **Fabulous Killjoys  
** ****

_Do what I please, gonna spread the disease, because I wanna  
Gonna call all the shots for the "No"s and the "Not"s, because I wanna  
Ask me once I'll answer twice, 'cause what I know I'll tell,  
because I wanna!  
Sound device and lots of ice I'll spell my name out loud  
because I wanna!  
Oh, yeah?!  
  
_

You already know this crew. Or at least, you've heard of them. Fame is less than infamy and they go hard with both. All anyone _really _knows is one Fabulous one has beef with a specific Exterminator, set apart from the general seething hate that everyone in the desert had.  
Stories about _why _wander roads like Runners themselves. They all came from the City higher-ups and were an embarrassment so great that BLI couldn't stand to let them go. They helped build BLI, way back when it had to be built like an engine from the ground up, and then gone rogue with all the secrets they still knew, so the nobodyface had been sent to track them down like blood through sand and they'd been evidently nemesis' ever since. The Exterminator had been one of them once, and then gotten captured and turned. Or he'd been _with _one of them, beyond hook-ups and into twisting connections and feelings that covered everything like kudzu, which when he'd gotten turned had made it all the worse. They were teachers or parents or wider relatives to someone on the crew, and it was a personal vendetta. They had no relation at all.  
Whatever the truth, it's a fucking death wish.

Other than that, they were good shots as a whole, two of them were tied to each other at the heart; they live out of a broken-down diner in Six, and kept as much to themselves as they could with their faces splashed across everything.  
The Fabulous four are flamboyant, in colour and fire, and loud, and near-suicidally stupid. The prettiest and best recipe for disaster the Zones has ever seen.

**Members: **Four. An artist and batshit fighter, an engineer and demolition man, a medic and mechanical-inventor, a musician and a networker. All of them blasty as shit. Everyone said for the longest time that there wasn't and never had been anyone else: some groups you can join, out of necessity or just friendship, but not the Fabulous crew. You were an ally, or an enemy, or a nondescript, or a wannabe, but you couldn't be a Fabulous killjoy yourself.  
That got twisted around when the motorbaby showed up. Seemingly just having popped out of the dust, she'd taken to hanging with them; mid-sized sugathead who still wore white jackets and had hair nearly as curled up as Jet Star's. A daughter, a sister, a random? No one's real sure. But she's theirs, and they belong with her. Sun help anyone who tries to cross her.  
  
**Featherings: **Anything tight and bright-bright-bright. Leather jackets as a bonus. Party Poison favours Mousekat faces.  
**Territory: **Their Di(n)er, and about two square miles around it. They go wherever and stay as long as they want. By all evidence, all that matters is that they're stuck together.  
  


**~**

  * ******Glitter Guts**

_Don't it beat a slow dance to death?  
Don't it beat a slow dance to death?  
  
_A jealous and loud bunch, quick to fight or grin, but primarily there to turn a various profit, with carbons or barters. They provide a roof, a sound system, some alc and some lights, and the desert-runners come to them to party. Their base is an old warehouse/new club, a Fuck You House all on its lonesome in a flat stretch of Zone Two, called Glimmer. They've fixed it up pretty enough. Call it for a good time.  
The oldest of them, Dinah Might, was there since right after the Fires had burnt themselves out and all the Pig Bombs had been dead leather for more than a while. They picked up the others as every one of them faltered in, and made a show. Dinah runs their crew loosely, and manages the Fuck You house shinily enough, but watches their trade stashes with a hawks eye.  
The Guts have their own clashes-- don't prefer anyone too much older than Dinah, and react badly to babyfaces, in general--- but the club itself they keep as neutral as is fair. Blood on the floor drives away dancers, after all. They encourage violence outside their bounds on a bright night, though. Glimmer isn't a safe place; it's a vibrant one, which is real different.

Glitter Guts has connections up and down the Zones, mostly to keep themselves a steady flow of drink and dancers and party favours. Their closest decent ally-ship is with the Murder City crew, particularly Petra Pita, who'd met up with Dinah Might back when they'd both still had different names. Not that any of the Guts will tell you anything like it.  
_  
_**Members: **Dinah Might the first and the most principals, about sixteen others around em. With traitors / innovators / casualities it can fluctuate.**  
Featherings: **Glittery half-masks over the top half of their faces, hiding or exaggerating. (Where they got all the fucking glitter, no one knows and they aren't talking.) Other than that whatever they can get their shaky little hands on.**  
Territory: **Glimmer itself and out to the horizon on all sides. They're a pass-by route, no one generally stops for the night except to stop with them, but if someone did they'd take them out. Competition is bad for business. The club is one of those places that's safer with _more _people in it, and not only because safety in numbers. It's toughter to pick fights in a crowd.

The crew named themselves well: every single night after any body wakes up on or around Glimmer's floor, they have shiny bits stuck to them afterwards for weeks on end. It's part of the brand.

_~  
_

  * **Murder City Gang  
**

_Here they come marching down the street_  
_like a desperation murmur of a heartbeat,_  
_Coming back from the edge of town, underneath their feet_  
  
They're not good people, exactly. They're also not bad people who happen to do good things.  
It'd be easiest to say they are definitely teenagers, except the oldest of them is twenty-one, and for a while, the youngest was six. Years old. Entirely. Her, the motorbaby, and her sister, the Girl, had popped up out of the sand together aroundabouts the same time; which was a while back.  
If you'd thought to ask how the crew felt about that, a the time, they'd say they didn't know. But they'd still named the kids, and as everyone in the desert knows, if you've got a name then you belong there. Whether you like it or not. By all accounts, the Murder crew did like the little dust angels well enough.

The Murder City killjoys would say they live on the road, in drug hazes or highs, and during raids. Literally, they occupy space in a run–down old high school-- the small city of death itself-- out in Zone Three, close to the Two border. The building is dark and echoing and held together by graffitti and cobwebs, but it's surprisingly sturdy. Suits them well.

They steal and trade for resources, not control them, except for the water pump out back of the school. They don't forgive each other for a whole herd of things, but over time they forget, or whatever reason they had for anger gets ground down between all of the other ways they save each others lives and pass the time and just becomes more sand, like everything.  
****

**Members: **Seven to begin with: Petra Pita, Crisis Lane, Harpy, Acid Pop, GR, Ultra-Violet Deathwish, Skitter Scratch. Then they picked up two sugarheaded roadgoblins, and a few months later lost Skitter to ghosts. Eight all together and then they closed ranks again. They're not a group that generally recruitsl Motorbaby and the Girl were special cases.**  
**

**Featherings: **Individual to each but generally stuff that's bright, soft and available. Two of the eight really value fucking up their hair.**  
**

**Territory: **A square two miles around Murder City itself. They don't venture out too far. Comfortable with going farther in to Two, maybe the very outer edge of One, and out to the edge of Four, but after that they get nervous. They've got a lot to lose.

  
~

  * **Rats (Many)  
**

_We are not brave, we are not wise  
We stand at the end of the longest lines  
But we stand here all together.  
We have been damned, we have survived  
We came back to homes we don’t recognize  
But we return here all together_.  
  
The oldest crew in California. Less of a gang as a lifestyle, and less of a lifestyle as a practice. Zone Rats are the widest-stretching crew currently alive; they call themselves a colony as a whole, and in their smaller groups they're packs, with other Rats in other packs being cousins. There are also actual blood-cousins within the group, as well as parents and siblings and children. Out of all the crews in the Zones, the Rats are the most friendly to families among them. Partly because they're so many.  
  


Rats are legion and subdivided within the whole.

The first were the Ritalin Rats, who'd lived in Zone One right up cozy next to the city and the drugs that they had taken their name from. (Three or four of the first Ritalins had been the very first, the royalty; they had names and titles, but unless you were a Rat yourself they'd get lost pretty fast in the massive wave that came after.)

Second were Tunnel Rats, who had spilled away from the warehouses and hideouts in One into the underground motorway echo chambers in Two and even into the edges of Three when they were threatened.

Some time after that the Dust Rats had split off and surfaced to go sniffing around into Zone Three properly, where they made themselves happy dens amidst the hills and the Joshua trees.

Plague Rats had followed the Dusty's up from the tunnels but had kept pushing forward and through, way out to the Out-Zones where the rad level made the rocks on the ground glow some days. They took rebreathers and two-way radios and medicine and bikes, and set up little outposts for any others who came.

  
Over the years two new packs split off from the Plagues: Mischiefs, who turned around from the outskirts to travel in and along the desert's highway arteries on bikes and cars and caravans, never settling for long; and Road Rats, who struck out farther, into the flat barren wasteland that Before had separated California from Nevada and Arizona. Maybe they made it or maybe they didn't. No one heard much from them after they leave, just like all the other Runners who went out that way.  
  


Each pack has names and customs as separate from the colony, but there are both of more that tie them all in the colony together. Like the names “pack” and “colony”. Their whiskers, of course. An intricate spirituality they don't usually discuss with anyone who isn't a Rat and sometimes who isn't part of theiir specific pack. The practice that more company is better: when going out to trade or party they travel together, usually three Rats at a time. It's very rare to see even a pair of Rats alone. They fight hard with knives and guns and whatever else they can get their paws on, especially when cornered. Escape is _always _preferable to fighting. All Rats learn to run fast and hide well, shoot last. Outsiders make jokes about them eating each other when the times get tight but that's bullshit based on bad observations; they feast whenever they can or starve together. They take care of their sick and bury their dead.

Handfuls to tens to dozens to hundreds. Subdividing and splitting away, but always multiplying. Never dying off completely.  
Newcomers are welcomed under suspicion. After a while-- how long is up to the specific pack leader, or the whole pack on a vote depending on which one the newcomer falls in-- some of the suspicion drops. After a longer while, they're given a choice: get their whiskers or get out. Whiskers are not given easily but once you have them you keep them.

**Members:** Many-many.**  
Featherings: **Anything they want, with specific packs picking up specific patterns. One thing that binds all of them share is their ears—sliced off at the very top part, so they’re not rounded so much; flatter, rodent-like. “Whiskers” mean chops to withstand the chop. They’re taken care of when healing, and no one can get forced into it, but if you have them you have them. They stay. **  
Territory: **Everywhere._  
  
~  
_

  * **Scrubs**

_We'll build our walls aluminum_,  
_we'll fill our mouths with cinnamon, now._  
_Hear all the bombs fade away._****

_  
_Rare example of a true neutral crew. The Scrubs run the Slides, the abandoned rust-and-waterpark turned fair space and enforcably neutral ground. They don't tolerate anybody breaking that peace. They're traders and deal-makers, although they ally with nobody particularly, to better serve everyone on as equal ground as they can. Supply a lot of the med-packs used to keep people going, the kind of parchment pills or regular pills that are taken for granted in Battery City but can be real hard to come by in the Zones outside of their domain. No one much fucks with them, for that reason. And because they're quick on the triggers if they feel it's needed.

Fairs are held half-regularly, twice every month on purpose and on special occassions if the grapevine trickles down enough all at once to say that there's a fair going on. Scrubs are always alert for people rolling up to them, but generally permissive of unplanned events. Seem to go along with the motto of 'Build it and they will come'.

**Members:** Harder to tell than many groups because Scrubs don't often walk out together or make large notices of themselves; but a couple dozen at least**. **Hard to tell. Some are med-heads, some enforcers, all real insulated. One would guess that's part of the point.  
**Featherings: **They dress like any 'joy except for thin paper masks around their faces at all times, like surgeons from Before. Makes it clear who they are and harder to tell apart, all at once.**  
Territory: **The Slides, and every direction around them for a half-mile out**.** As you get closer, they get more vigiliant, but they don't like fighting anywhere near them to begin with. Cross carefully.  
  
  
~  
****

  * **WKIL, Slaughtermatic Sounds  
**

_I'll be your surgeon, your proctor, your helicopter_  
_Pumping out the slaughtermatic sounds to **keep you live**!_

DJ Doctor Death-Defying's people. Not a business, not a corporation, but also not a crew or gang in the sense that most of the others are. Doctor Death-Defying is one of the most known radio pirates and/or sand DJs in the desert, for good reasons. The people around him don't share names, places, not more than a couple known-to-them faces, featherings, or bands.  
But they all know him, and if the doctor called them in, they'd show up in the next day. Some of them know each well enough; some of them keep to themselves except for passing favours back and forth to DD. The good doctor leads them like a drumline leads a band.  
Particularly close in favours and lifelines with the Fabulous Killjoys, and the other DJs: Hot Chimp, Cherri Cola especially.  
_  
_**Members: **Doctor Death-Defying himself,; the lovely Show Pony who's his partner / in crime; and dozens and dozens more in orbit around them, rotating outwards.**  
** Featherings: Motorized chair / crutch and rollerskates, respectively.  
**Territory: **Anywhere the road turns, with a couple safehouses and heavy-footed broadcast stations along the way.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some inspiration for these was taken from the ['Trash Blessings' art series (link here)](https://businessfish-art.tumblr.com/post/186633390984/trash-blessings-a-series-of-pieces-based-off), by tumblr user businessfish. Check them out!
> 
> Songs used to epigraph the crews are, in order:  
-'Possum By Night' (alternate title: 'Cult Of The Cornered Possum') by The Mountain Goats  
-'Hate To Say I Told You So' by The Hives  
-'Fast Slow Disco' by St. Vincent  
-'Homecoming' by Green Day  
-'Zero Visibility' by Rise Against  
-'Sons And Daughters' by The Decemberists, and  
-'Look Alive Sunshine' by MCR (of course).  
Shoutout to Syrup from whomst' I borrowed using the Hives song for the Fab four. Rock and roll, friend.


End file.
